Butter or margarine: Which causes less harm to the environment?
12.08.2026, DPA
The average person consumes a few kilograms of butter every year, with consumption particularly high across the northern hemisphere.
To produce a single 250 g pack of butter, around five litres of milk are needed. That high milk requirement means butter does not score well on climate impact, research has shown.
"Butter's CO2e footprint is larger than that of pork or chicken — at least when measured per kilogram," says Nils Rettenmaier of the Heidelberg Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (ifeu) in Germany.
For those puzzled by "CO2e": it is not a typo. CO2e stands for CO2 equivalents, a standardized unit of measurement used to make the climate impact of different greenhouse gases comparable. Besides carbon dioxide, this includes gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.
Even if you live in a country that consumes far more meat than butter, the impact on food-related greenhouse gas emissions is still visible, Rettenmaier explains.
Is margarine a more climate-friendly alternative?
Plant-based margarine fares better, the researcher says. An earlier ifeu study supports this, finding the following CO2e emissions per kilogram of product:
- Butter: 9.0 kg CO2e per kg
- Light butter (40% fat): 5.1 kg CO2e per kg
- Half-fat margarine: 1.7 kg CO2e per kg
- Full-fat margarine: 2.8 kg CO2e per kg
For blended spreads made from butter and vegetable fats, values varied by fat content, ranging from 6.6 kg to 7.2 kg CO2e per kg. "So the differences compared with butter are not that great here," Rettenmaier says.
The full environmental picture
Why does butter have such an impact on the environmental balance sheet? Environmental experts have pointed to several factors:
- Feed for cows requires large areas of agricultural land.
- Digestion by ruminants produces methane in bovine flatulence, resulting in high greenhouse gas emissions.
- Slurry contributes to nitrate contamination of groundwater.
- Antibiotic use contributes to the development of multi-resistant bacteria.
The ifeu study took all of these factors into account, examining the impact of the entire production process for nearly 200 foodstuffs — from agricultural production to the supermarket checkout. "It was not just about the climate impact, but also the land and water footprint as well as the phosphate footprint," Rettenmaier explained.
The result: plant-based margarine consistently shows a more favourable footprint than butter, regardless of whether the plant-based alternative is based on rapeseed or sunflower oil.
Why you should check the margarine's ingredients
While the permitted ingredients in butter tend to be more strictly regulated, the situation is more complicated for margarine.
"Margarine is not automatically a purely plant-based food. It can also contain skimmed milk, yoghurt or buttermilk," says nutritionist Claudia Müller, adding that only products declared as vegan contain no animal ingredients.
It is therefore worth looking more closely in the supermarket. "Anyone who reaches for plant-based margarine can make a contribution to climate protection," Rettenmaier says. "Light products overall perform even better than full-fat products."
However, margarine can be made from various fats and oils, including palm oil, palm fat and coconut fat. The problem, Müller says, is that "the cultivation of plants from which coconut fat and palm oil and fat are obtained takes place largely in monocultures, with significant consequences for biodiversity." This must also be viewed negatively from an ecological perspective, she says.
In the worst cases, rainforests are cleared for palm oil production. Sustainability experts therefore advise that when buying palm oil-containing margarine, shoppers look for the RSPO sustainability label with the addition SG or IP, as this designation may only appear on packaging for products containing certified palm oil.
Tip: Those wishing to reduce their overall environmental impact further could also opt for organic products. "That makes a big difference — through improved animal welfare and the avoidance of pesticides, for example," Rettenmaier says.
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